In Nora Lange’s US FOOLS, two sisters face all of the highs and lows, mostly lows of being raised on an Illinois farm during the 1980’s farming crisis. 

Before reading this novel, I knew nothing about the farming crisis. I am from Illinois and I had not even heard of it. I can only imagine how different that crisis would have been if the world already had wifi and social media. 

In the 80’s, as world politics shifted and weather shifted, the midwestern farmers found their passion, their livelihoods and their families all exposed and vulnerable. 

Joanna and Bernadette (Bernie) survive not only the farming crisis but also their often abusive father and not so present mother. 

Lange explores the generational trauma as the sisters investigate the lineage of women both in their family and the world who were marginalized or traumatized by the way the world responds to women. 

Lange takes a very committed lens of the historical treatment of women, which nearly crushes the sisters as they try to come to terms with how to walk through the world as women as well. 

They love each other fiercely and fight just as fiercely. I left the book missing the girls and wishing I could know them. I also left the book thinking a lot about what the women before me had to go through in order for my life to be what it is. 

I find it very moving to read a story that is so intimate and yet tackles huge global issues through intimacy. 

You will love these girls, and hurt for these girls, but you will also think. You will think about the lens through which each one of us sees the world and how the exactness of our life experiences results in opposing world views and irreconcilable differences. 

That may sound bleak, but I feel like what Lange is asking is, that we all have grace for each other. There is no avoiding our own biased perspectives so maybe we all need to just take a step back, consider the lens we choose to look through and then search for the peace within our differences.